[You may use this image without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the person who scanned the image and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one. in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one. ]

Having received his literary friend [Wegg] with great cordiality,
he conducted him to the interior of the Bower and there presented him to Mrs.
Boffin: — a stout lady of a rubicund and cheerful aspect, dressed (to
Mr. Wegg's consternation) in a low evening dress of sable satin, and a large
black velvet hat and feathers. [34]

Henrietta ("Henerietty") Boffin, as eager to acquire knowledge
of the classics of modern literature as her bustling husband, has dressed (or
should one say "over-dressed"?) to receive the vistor who will read the
"decline and fall off the Rooshan Empire." The manner of representation verges
on caricature, but there is none of the cartoon-like playfulness of Eytinge's
great American contemporary, John McLenan, illustrator of
A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations
for Harper's Weekly: A Journal of Civilization in the
late eighteen-fifties and early eighteen-sixties.

Only sketchily does Eytinge give us the parlour of The Bower or Harmony Jail,
and the clock incorectly registers one o'clock (in the afternoon, one presumes),
although it is evening when Wegg calls. Whereas Eytinge depicts Boffin
in a suit,
the text clearly indicates that Boffin is "in an undress garment of short white
smock-frock." One can only assume, therefore, that Eytinge is not introducing us
to the elderly couple at the moment of Wegg's arrival — after all, he does
not appear in the illustration — but rather earlier that day, when one
supposes Noddy Boffin mentioned to his wife that they would be receiving an oral
reading that evening. Eytinge's intention, then, appears simply to have been to
establish the benign character and mutual devotion of the Boffins, sparkling
eyed and youthful in their appreciation of life, despite their age and
working-class background.